April 9 (Bloomberg) -- A bipartisan Senate group
negotiating a rewrite of U.S. immigration law is close to a deal
on revising a visa program for farmworkers and has agreed to
improvements in border security, Arizona Republican Senators
John McCain and Jeff Flake said today.

They said the eight-member group is making progress on
resolving disputes over wage rates and visa caps for foreign
farm workers. The group was set to meet this afternoon for the
first time in almost three weeks after returning from an Easter
break.

“That’s been one of the difficulties all along, wage rates
and caps and everything else, but I don’t think there’s anything
significant that’s come up now that wasn’t there before,” Flake
told reporters. “It’s just tough to work through.”

McCain and Flake told reporters they signed off on a
proposal to improve border security, satisfying a chief
Republican demand. The two senators spoke to reporters today as
they entered a closed-door Republican lunch.

The push to rewrite U.S. immigration law is the first major
effort since 2007. Republican opposition to providing a path to
citizenship for 11 million undocumented workers already in the
U.S. has lessened since November’s election, when President
Barack Obama won 71 percent of Hispanic votes cast. Republican
leaders say the party needs to do more to court the fast-growing
group of voters.

‘Not Sure’

A Democratic member of the bipartisan group, Illinois
Richard Durbin, said in an interview that he was “not sure”
whether the group could meet its goal of introducing a bill this
week, the latest sign that the time frame is slipping.

“It turns out that the drafting part of this is much more
challenging,” Durbin said. “They’ve been working on it for
weeks on the things we agreed to. So I can’t predict when that
would be ready for actual bill introduction.”

Durbin said the group had “come pretty far” on resolving
the farm worker issue. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California
Democrat who led past efforts to revise the visa program for
agricultural laborers, said today that negotiators should know
in 24 hours whether a deal possible.

In recent days, prospects for unveiling a bill this week
have dimmed. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican
member of the group, said April 7 on NBC’s “Meet the Press”
that the senators hoped to introduce a bill “in the next couple
of weeks.”

Guest Workers

Visas for farm workers, a separate low-skilled guest worker
program, visas for high-skilled workers and a citizenship path
are among issues being negotiated, according to one aide, who
spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.

Still, senators involved in the talks said they were on
track to complete a proposal in the coming days.

“It’s not necessarily sticking points, it’s a complex
bill; these are provisions that take a while to write,” Flake
said.

The delay underscores the difficulty that Democrats, who
control the Senate, will have coming up with 60 votes needed to
pass an immigration proposal. The Republican-controlled House,
where a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers are crafting an
immigration proposal, poses a greater challenge.

Chiquita, Sunkist

A dispute over a visa program for farmworkers who harvest
the bulk of U.S. fruits and vegetables has emerged as a focus of
the talks. The American Farm Bureau Federation, the United Farm
Workers of America and groups representing companies including
Chiquita Brands International Inc. and Sunkist Growers Inc. are
among those weighing in on how to structure a program for
largely seasonal, lesser-paid agricultural laborers.

Wage requirements for workers and the number of visas
allowed under a farm guest worker program are the two main
sticking points, said Kristi Boswell, congressional relations
director for immigration at the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The group is the largest representing U.S. farmers.

“We are hammering out the final details on the wages and
caps to make sure the program is sustainable,” Boswell said in
a telephone interview. “They are the linchpin details for the
entire program.”

About 25 percent of the farm workforce -- more than 300,000
individuals -- don’t have valid immigration paperwork, according
to a 2009 study by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Wage Gains

The United Farm Workers of America, the largest migrant
agricultural labor group, maintains that growers are trying to
use the debate over immigration policy to erode wage gains
workers have made.

“There is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be
done” before a final deal can be reached, Senate Agriculture
Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, told
reporters today. “We have too many farmers who do not have any
confidence that they have a workable legal immigrant system or
visa system.”

The farm worker issue has taken on prominence since
business and labor leaders reached a tentative agreement March
29 over the structure of a program to allocate visas to low-skilled, non-farm foreign workers.

The agreement would establish a federal bureau called the
Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research and a visa
program called the W Visa Program, according to the AFL-CIO, the
nation’s largest labor union. The group reached the agreement
with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business
group.

Labor Shortages

The bureau would use labor market and demographic data to
identify labor shortages and help set an annual visa cap. It
would be funded through registered employer fees.

Employers seeking workers in less-skilled fields including
hospitality, janitorial services, retail and construction could
apply through the visa program, which also would allow workers
to seek permanent status after working for one year.

The program would start with 20,000 visas in the first year
and could never exceed 200,000 annually. One-third of all visas
would go only to businesses with less than 25 employees, and
construction visas would be capped at 15,000 per year,
addressing the AFL-CIO’s concern about a potentially adverse
impact on that industry.

House Republicans, including Idaho’s Raul Labrador, have
said the agreement wouldn’t get much support in the House
because it was too favorable to unions.

Price Tag

Senators of both parties also have raised concerns about
the proposal’s cost, with Republicans focusing on the price tag
for creating a 13-year pathway to citizenship and Democrats
emphasizing border security measures.

Opponents of granting legal status to undocumented
immigrants in the U.S. maintain the plan would be a deficit-swelling burden on the federal budget and proponents say it
could provide needed growth to a recovering economy.

Another potential stumbling block is Republicans’ demand
that a pathway to citizenship occur only after the Department of
Homeland Security certifies that there’s been a measurable
increase in border security.

The Senate group’s plan will provide more Border Patrol
agents, improved infrastructure such as radio networks, and
increased surveillance by unmanned aerial drones. The
legislation will propose a commission of state and local
officials from states bordering Mexico to monitor progress of
these measures and advise the Department of Homeland Security,
according to principles the Senate group released in January.

Final Product

“I’m satisfied with that language that seems to be coming
out, but we have to look at the final product,” Flake said
today.

In a sign that some Republican lawmakers may demand more
stringent border security than what the Senate group proposes,
Senator John Cornyn and House Homeland Security Chairman Michael
McCaul, both Texans, today proposed requiring federal officials
to certify “a 90 percent probability that illegal border
crossers” will be apprehended.

Cornyn said he wants the proposal to “inform” the Senate
legislation.

The last major immigration revision, signed by President
Ronald Reagan in 1986, made 3 million undocumented workers
eligible for legal status and created a market for fraudulent
documentation. Illegal immigration soared, casting a shadow on
subsequent efforts to legalize immigrants.

Another contentious issue in the talks has been how to
accommodate Republicans’ demand to increase the number of visas
given to foreign nationals who receive graduate degrees in
science and technology fields from U.S. universities.

A compromise may require a tradeoff between more job-related visas and the annual allotment of 65,000 visas for adult
siblings of naturalized U.S. citizens.